In preparing this edition of the Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, it has been the intention of the publishers to embody in a fit and adequate form the authentic narrative of Franklin. Though the story breaks off abruptly in the year 1757, when Franklin had the three most splendid decades of his life still before him, it has seemed best neither to make use of any of the continuations of the chronicle that have been constructed, nor to attempt a new one, but rather to let the Autobiography remain as it stood when the pen fell from Franklin's hand, in tantalizing but imperishable incompleteness. Yet, considered either as a human document or as a piece of artistic construction, the Autobiography is but superficially incomplete. For many readers, Ben Franklin the printer, provincial philosopher, and citizen of Philadelphia, is a more intimate and engaging figure than Dr. Benjamin Franklin, the diplomatist, cosmopolitan savant, and citizen of the world. The true drama of his life was enacted in the |